Why designers should take part in contests like Cadabra Design Challenge

A constant desire to learn and develop makes the professional. And the more the market you work for is competitive, the more you need to learn new things and improve yourself. There are many options on how to become a better designer, and today we are going to speak about design challenges and contests.

Contests and their advantages

Design competitions often become keys to a breakthrough, they can help to boost design skills, expand the portfolio, share works and get a rating of these works. The best thing about design challenges and competitions is that participants can choose the one with the most suitable rules. Depending on their needs they can make their choice basing on duration, entry fee, prize and dedication to a certain topic or technique. Winning competition can catapult you to the top of the industry.

Also, competitions can develop soft skills like discipline, the ability to generate ideas quickly, honestly evaluate the quality of your work by comparing your results with other designers’ works on the same topic, and master your proficiency.

Design challenges and reasons for participating

Design challenges are similar to contests but they provide designers with the possibility to challenge themselves not to compete with others. Challenges can now be found on various platforms like Dribbble, Behance, Daily UI, or even Instagram. Both challenges and contests are all about the answer to the question designers ask “How can I improve my design and make the project better?”

But, in comparison with contests, challenges are more about duration. Designers may be looking for a UI/UX design challenge that will last all year, or perhaps they want to take part only for a week or a month. Or maybe they are looking for something even less time-consuming.

Also, challenges are all about activity in social networks. You will publish works and they will be viewed by organizers, other contestants and people who are interested in the topic or design companies employers who are looking for new people. And with constant and stable participation in the challenge, organizers and other contestants will be able to track UI and UX designer growth and give it an honest assessment and provide advice.

Cadabra Design Challenge

Cadabra Studio enables UI/UX designers, motion designers, and illustrators to participate in the Cadabra Design Challenge. This is an interesting and not time-consuming way to practice UI and UX design for personal growth and development. Initially, this challenge was created for the designers at Cadabra Studio and was aimed to train their skills through small but exciting tasks. Later it became open for everyone who wanted to try their hand at it.

Every Wednesday our contestants get a task, which they should perform within 1 hour. This time limit allows organizers and the participants themselves to see the fair result of their work and evaluate their ability to work in comparison with others.

Cadabra Design Challenge will help you not just to expand your portfolio, but diversify it with interesting works. Our participants have already done a design for a website where users can find a fitness coach in their city, presented the interfaces of the Game of Thrones mobile app (Starks or Lannisters — leave your preferences in comments). They had the task called “40 crosses” — designers had to draw 40 crosses on a sheet of paper and then add other elements to each cross to make it look like something else. And a lot more unusual tasks (see hashtag #cadabrachallenge on Instagram).

All the outstanding works are always posted on Cadabra Challenge profile on Instagram where they can get an honest assessment and powerful feedback.

5 key advantages of Cadabra Studio challenge

Why is Cadabra Design Challenge worth your attention?

• It is fast. Not everyone can complete tasks 365 days a year. But almost everyone can devote an hour of their time once a week.
• It is interesting. Each task of our challenge is specially chosen so that it blows your mind a little (imagine how you would do the task “My day in 50 years.” Designers had 1 hour to create a comics that show their day in 50 years: what they’ll be eating, where they’ll be going, who they’ll be hanging out with etc.)
• It is useful. You can easily see the results of other participants and compare your achievements with theirs. And the fact that everyone should spend only 1 hour on the task greatly simplifies the assessment because everyone is on an equal footing.
• It is a real test. Cadabra Challenge teaches participants how to overcome perfectionism and generate ideas in just an hour, how to filter out bad ideas from the very beginning and determine worthwhile ones.
• It is just awesome. To see that your work was singled out, published on social networks and appreciated by likes — well, nothing could be nicer.

If you are looking for a creative and challenging way to improve your design skills, then Cadabra Design Challenge is the right choice. So, when the next time you have crucial “How do I become a better designer?” in your mind, open Cadabra Challenge profile on Instagram and become the part of something exciting. Learn to think creatively, develop the ability to produce new ideas within the limited time and get feedback on your work. And, of course, get inspired by the works of other participants.

See you next Wednesday in Cadabra Design Challenge.

Originally written for Cadabra Studio Blog.